Marking the Walls

\From the LATimes visit to the Los Angeles River and surveying the tagging culture: The centerpiece is something officials say is the biggest tag they've
ever seen: Three block letters that cover a three-story-high wall and
run the length of several blocks between the 4th Street and 1st Street
bridges. It spells out "MTA" -- Metro Transit Assassins." The article goes on:

Cleaning graffiti from the river is far more expensive than cleaning
other areas. Officials use high-pressure water spray to remove the
toxic paint. But hazardous-material crews must then dam and capture all
the paint and water runoff to prevent it from getting into the riverbed.

Roland Gonzales, with the Army Corps of Engineers, estimates that the
price tag for cleaning the roughly two miles of concrete walls could
reach half a million dollars.

"We can paint today and they'll be back here tomorrow," Gonzales said.
"It is a fresh canvas for them. . . . They will be right behind you."

However, with the tagger mentality thriving on the rush of marking wall––and in many ways more important than displaying any craft or skill––makes these form a forced message to be read. It's not art. It's visual spam.

Taggers are holding back a lot of potential young artists from earning any respect.

I'm not one for breaking the law but what i see there is pure art and would just leave it. The Motor Transit Authority could use it as one of there logos or something. But just because I'm suggesting that we leave it doesn't mean the people responsible should get off because it's still illegal. The people responsible should still get prosecuted. And also from what I heard is almost a half a million to two and a half million to clean up, that's money that California don't have at this time.

btw. they do not deploy hazerdous waste crews. They just wrote that to beef up the article. They just clean it,sometimes power wash,sometimes just paint over it. They clean the river all the time! just not in down town LA.